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“She Staggered to Her Feet and Screamed with 
Inarticulate Rage/’— Page 44. 




CIRCLED BY 


FIRE. 


A TRUE STORY. 


BY 



JULIA MCNAIR WRIGHT, 

AUTHOR OF “firebrands;” “the emerald spray;” “a strange 
SEA story;” “life cruise of captain BESS ADAMS;” 
“nothing to drink;” “jug or not;” “how 

COULD HE ESCAPE ;” “ ON LONDON BRIDGE,” ETC. 


2 ^ 


Of 

Vcj. 

; cw 1879. 
NEW YORK ; V/ ^ 


National Temperance Society and Publication House, 

68 KEADE STREET. 

1879. 



'Ki 

'X3 



COPYRIGHT, 1879, BY 

J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent. 





Edward O. Jenkins’ Print, 

20 North Wiluam Street, N. Y. 


/ CO 



'^"CIRCLED BY EIRE. 



A TRUE TALE. 

'N unusually bright and warm 
June afternoon shone over Edin- 
burgh. Fortunately it was Sat- 
urday, when all the city has a half-holiday, 
and the whole population seemed to have 
turned out into the public places. 

In the Prince’s Gardens the steady fa- 
thers played bowls; the maids trundled 
babes in little coaches; the Highland 
pipers sounded wild pilrochs in a pavil- 
ion under the frowning heights of the 


4 Circled by Fire. 

Castle, and lovers paced along the flower- 
bordered promenades. 

In the Meadows a club of portly mer- 
chants, dressed in green and gold, prac- 
ticed archery ; three cricket clubs were in 
full play ; their red, white, and green uni- 
forms mixing, mingling, and disentangling, 
like figures in a kaleidoscope, as they 
made their runs. Foot-ball also had its 
partisans, and crowds of burly or bony 
apprentices ran, kicked, tumbled, and 
scuffled over the huge flying balls, terror 
of all the women and children in the 
vicinity. 

The Links swarmed with golf-players, 
and at the eastward of the city hundreds 
of people poured into the green slopes. 


Circled by Fire. 5 

lovely drives and walks, and storied nooks, 
which surround Holyrood Castle and Ar- 
thur’s Seat. Among these Miss Harlowe 
walked alone and moody. She passed 
one low rise after another, lingered where 
some children were waking “the image 
of the voice ” at the famous “ echo curve,” 
and then moved on to the pathway cut in 
the face of Salisbury Craigs. Slowly she 
climbed on and on until she’ reached the 
semicircular Cat Nick, five hundred and 
seventy feet above the sea level, where, 
on a bench hewn in the rock, she sat 
down facing the city. • 

A light breeze lifted and waved the 
smoke pall which lowers over Dun Edin ; 
the sunlight bronzed the tumultuous 


6 Circled by Fire. 

masses of cloud, and bordered and fringed 
them with gold ; where they parted and 
broke away entirely, looked forth the 
stately buildings, domed and towered and 
pinnacled, for which this glorious city is 
famous. 

All the houses of joy in the joyous city 
woke no answer to their mirth on this 
solitary face watching from the Cat Nick. 
If some faces are illuminated b)^ a light 
from within, others are darkened by a 
shadow from within, and Miss Harlowe’s 
was one of these. The children who ran 
along the Craig path said to themselves 
that she was “ a cross lady ; ” the working 
folk rambling by glanced askance and 
pronounced her “ a prood leddy ; ” a stately 


Circled by Fire. 


7 


grandsire passing with two boys, who 
leaped and laughed about him like young 
satyrs, knew that she was a very unhappy 
lady, and he lifted his hat to her with a 
look of involuntary compassion. He had 
nearly passed the Cat Nick curve, when 
with an imploring gesture to the seat at 
her side. Miss Harlowe delayed him. 

» Lads !” cried the old man, “ run along. 
I will rest here for a while.” 

“ Aye, aye, grandsir,” shouted the boys, 
“we’re gaun to St. Margaret’s Loch to 
sail our wee boaties !” and down the path 
they leaped and shouted as joyously as 
they had ascended. 

Meantime the grandfather sat down, 
and feeling the burden of conversation 


8 


Circled by Fire. 


resting upon him, said : “ I am glad you 
are out enjoying the day.” 

“Not enjoying,” said Miss Harlowe ; 
“ I know no joy. I came out to try and be 
rid of my friends, of myself, of every face 
that knows me or can hate or pity me. 
But the effort to escape is always idle ; I 
carry my curse in my heart. Doctor Cal- 
derwood, I often think I will go out on 
one of the Burntisland steamers and jump 
into the Firth at mid-channel, to be done 
with the woe of living.” 

“ Once a human being is born, Miss 
Harlowe, it can never be done with living. 
There is no such thing for us as Death ; 
what we call death is only a change of 
state. We project ourselves into the fu- 


Circled by Fire. 


9 


ture as we are, and continue through eter- 
nity on that good or evil line which we 
started here. If we are not fit to live, or 
righteously happy in living, then we are 
not fit to die. My poor friend, I grieve 
to see you so cast down ; but do not allow 
yourself to be driven from a misfortune to 
a ‘crime.” 

“ Misfortune .? Crime ? Who can un- 
ravel these in my case ? My crime is a 
misfortune, and my misfortune is a crime. 
I feel that I am bearing a terrible and an 
inherited burden. I also know that I am 
guilty before God.” 

“Miss Harlowe,” said the doctor, “ have 
you prayed for help.? Have you cast 
yourself on Him who is able to keep you 


lo Circled by Fire. 

from falling? I believe you to be a 
Christian woman ; now do you realize that 
the Lord Jesus Christ is a burden-bearer 
for our sins as well as for our sorrows, and 
that He can, in us now, work miracles 
and cast out demons, just as He did 
during the days of His Incarnation 
below ? ” 

“ Doctor,’' said Miss Harlowe, speaking 
hesitatingly, and with a mighty effort at 
self-mastery, “in such days as this, days 
of reaction, with the bitterness of shame 
overwhelming me, and my fatal thirst 
quenched by its indulgence, then I cry to 
God. I pray Him to take me out of the 
world before I sin again in this way. I 
ask Him, as King Alfred did, for any 


Circled by Fire. 


II 


bodily disease which may overmaster my 
besetting sin. I tell Him to take what 
He will, health, reason, property, so that 
He takes with it my appetite for strong 
drink. I think that it can not be that I 
shall be so weak and failing any more. 
Then after a longer or shorter interval, so 
long sometimes that I am lulled into se- 
curity, all at once, sudden as a flash of 
lightning, there comes in me a frantic 
craving for strong drink. Sometimes I 
struggle to pray a little ; but, Doctor, you 
will hardly believe it or understand it, I 
feel that if I pray very earnestly, God may 
hear my cry and keep me from touching 
liquor, and liquor I want and must have 
and will have, and would sell my soul to 


12 ■ Circled by Fire. 

obtain ; and I see disgrace and pain and 
repentance as very small matters in com- 
parison with my awful thirst. It is the 
Scripture story of a strong man armed, 
keeping the house, that is my conscience ; 
and a stronger than he coming, binding 
him, taking possession, that is my inher- 
ited thirst. I realize my false position, 
my abnormal condition ; but I see, taste, 
hear, smell liquor, and that only, and be- 
fore this invading torrent of desire, pride, 
conscience, resolution, all restraint, break 
down and are carried away, and I am left 
to sin, to loathe, and to repent. Doctor, 
I have seen on our Northern rivers an 
eygre or spate, a great unconquerable wall 
of water rushing down the stream, and 


Circled by Fire. 13 

sweeping all before it — so seems this ter- 
rible madness in my soul.” 

“ You are right,” said the physician, in 
deep compassion, *' it is a madness ; it is a 
disease. You have inherited oinomania^ 
inherited and self-produced also. It has 
been my judgment, after long study of 
cases such as yours, that this disease, in its 
worst and most unconquerable form, may 
be inheritable. And yet. Miss Harlowe, 
I do not want you to despair ; you must 
not give yourself up as incurable.. Leprosy 
has never been cured by physicians, but 
Christ cured leprosy. What is impossL 
ble with men, is possible with God. He 
can make you more than conqueror; 
through Him that hath loved you. Fight 


14 Circled by Fire. 

the good fight of faith, lay hold on eter- 
nal life, and you may yet stand among 
that noble throng whom John saw in 
heaven ; these are they who have come 
out of great tribulation, and have washed 
their robes and made them white in the 
blood of the Lamb.” 

No responsive lustre of hope bright- 
ened the listener’s face at these good 
words, she had hoped against hope so 
long. She answered in a despairing mon- 
otone : 

“To cure me would be, indeed, to per- 
form the impossible. Doctor. I am Circled 
by Fire ! If I shut myself up at home, 
seeing no one, going nowhere, then I 
think that this thirst sooner grows upon 


Circled by Fire. 15 

me. If I take up a book to entertain 
myself according to my taste — Dickens, 
Bulvver, Thackeray, all of our best novel- 
ists, most of our poets and essayists — by 
their allusions to, or elaborations of, the 
drinking customs of society, blow to a 
flame the dormant embers of my fatal 
taste. If I go out among my friends, as 
likely as not where I call, I am hospitably 
offered cake and wine. If, as to-day, I 
am in the full strength of revulsion, I re- 
fuse ; but if my craving has awaked, the 
proffer is my ruin ; and sometimes when 
I have not begun to experience it, a glass 
of wine offered in thoughtless kindness 
has made me mad, and I have gone home 
to become intoxicated. It is the same if 


1 6 Circled by Fire. 

I go out to dinner, wine comes on with 
dessert ; or to an evening party, it comes 
with the refreshments. In the guise of 
the drinking customs of elegant society, 
my enemy lies in wait to destroy me. 

“ I tried charity work, as offering activ- 
ity and interest to my mind, and likely to 
benefit my fellows, but the streets where I 
went were crowded with gin-palaces and 
liquor-stores ; the air of streets and of 
houses was for me laden with a horrible 
temptation. I am hedged in on every 
side ; I look for a way of escape and find 
none.” 

“ Possibly,” said the sympathetic physi- 
cian, meditatively, “some stronger emo- 
tion might have driven this taste from your 


Circled by Fire. 17 

soul. The love of a wife and a mother 
might have dominated a heart so tender 
and duty -loving as yours. It is a pity 
that you have not domestic cares to ab- 
sorb you.” 

Miss Harlowe did not answer ; she 
looked across the green park and the 
carriage-crowded Queen’s Drive at her 
feet with an expression of stony despair. 

“ I thought, some years ago, that young 
Wallace More was very attentive to you. 
Miss Harlowe.” 

Miss Harlowe turned sharply upon him 
— “ Doctor! do you remember my father.?” 

“ Y es, yes, poor fellow 1 ” 

“ And my grandmother, do you remem- 
ber her .? ” 


1 8 Circled by Fire. 

“Yes,” said the doctor, more softly, 
shaking his head. 

“And remembering them, how dare 
you ask me why I have not married to 
pass this horrible inheritance on to an- 
other generation ? This one comfort I , 
have, that this Harlowe-thirst shall die 
with me. I am the last and only one left 
of my family, and you know, Doctor, 
what has sapped their strength, so that 
they have not lived out half their days, 
and one has died in a mad-house and one 
has been a suicide. You were right, sir, 
Wallace More was attentive to me, and 
when I saw it, I shut myself up and faced 
the past, and set before myself the long 
dreadful line of facts that belong to us ; 


19 


Circled by Fire. 

and I saw my great aunt in her asylum 
grinning behind the bars; and my uncle 
lying stiff on the floor with that mark 
around his neck ; and my father slowly 
dying; and the shameful scenes of my 
grandmother’s last years, and I resolved 
that I would blight no man’s life, and pass 
down to no children a curse. I dared not 
expose myself to Wallace More’s argu- 
ments and entreaties. I preferred that 
he should think me heartless and trivial, 
rather than that I might yield to his 
prayer for his ruin. I treated him slight- 
ingly and withdrew from him before he 
could offer me his hand. It hurt his feel- 
ings, but that was better than a life-long 
regret. He is now happy with a wife and 


20 Circled by Fire. 

children, and I have not his heart-break to 
repent of, whatever comes to me, whether 
I go mad or am a suicide or die like my 
grandmother ! ” 

The old doctor’s look at Miss Harlowe 
was mingled of compassion and admira- 
tion. Not that she was charming in 
youth, for she had reached middle age ; 
nor was she fascinating in face ; hers was 
a sad, while a comely, intelligent face, and 
she had the mien and grace of a lady ; 
but beyond most other women this wom- 
an had been unhappy and heroic. 

“ Miss Harlowe,” said the doctor, “you 
will neither die in a mad-house nor com- 
mit suicide, nor go down, like your grand- 
mother, dishonored to the grave. Do 


21 


Circled by Fire. 

you remember the words of our Lord— 
Neither shall any pluck them out of my 
hand ? It is true that you may be as a 
warning and a wonder unto many ; the 
sins of parents are visited physically and 
mentally on their children through many 
mournful generations, and some, like you, 
who fight and suffer, must stand as warn- 
ings to a dull world, that the parent is his 
child’s keeper, and for his child’s sake he 
must be moral. But I believe that through 
all this night of your temptation and fall- 
you of the purchased ones of 
Calvary, and that God will yet save you 
from yourself and sin, and lead you to 
His rest.” 

Miss Harlowe looked toward the doc 


22 Circled by Fire. 

tor for a moment, her eyes full of tears. 
Then she looked away, over the towered 
city, and thought how wretched it had 
been to her all her life, and how it was 
spread with nets and pits for such as she. 
The thought stayed her softer feelings. 
She was a reticent woman ; she never 
talked of her troubles, except to her doc- 
tor and minister, and but seldom to them. 
She had united with the church in her 
youth, and now she was a great trouble to 
her minister, and the church was a great 
trouble to her. She lodged outside of 
the limits of the congregation, and her 
intoxication was unknown to any of her 
fellow church -people, except the pastor 
and physician. Some people suspected 


Circled by Fire. 


23 


“ something wrong ” or “ something queer ” 
about Miss Harlovve, but suspicions had 
never become certainties. She gave lib- 
erally, was of good family, and went into 
society but little. She realized that if the 
church knew of her terrible failing, she 
would be excluded from membership; 
she felt as if she sat among Christians in 
the shadow of false pretenses. The pastor 
believed that this unhappy woman was 
one of the feeble and straying ones of the 
fold, whom the Good Shepherd would 
yet carry in His own arms out of the wil- 
derness. 

“ What shall we do with her ? ” said the 
despairing pastor to his friend the old 
doctor. 


24 


Circled by Fire. 


“ Let us quietly wait for the event,” said 
the doctor. “ I feel that if we reject hei 
from our number, we shall be rejecting 
one with whom the Master has patience.” 

“ Doctor,” said Miss Harlowe, turning 
about to continue the conversation, “ I re- 
member my father; my first memory is 
of him lying on his reclining chair, and 
saying, as he looked at me, ‘ Puir lassie ! 
puir lassie!’ He was a kind-tempered 
man, and never cross when he was intoxi- 
cated; but I suppose his drinking, and 
the long times he used to be away, no one 
knew where, discouraged my poor moth- 
er, and threw her into the consumption 
or ‘ pining,’ of which she died.” 

“Yes, that was about it,” said Doctor 


Circled by Fire. 25 

Caldenvood ; “ she had but a slender con- 
stitution to begin with. Are any of her 
family left ? ” 

“ It was a small family, and no one is 
left but her nephew, a minister near 
Montreal, Canada. I write to Malcom ; 
he is a good man, but he don’t know 
about — ” 

Miss Harlowe stopped abruptly, then 
continued : “ And my father ' finally had 
his leg crushed in a spree, and it was am- 
putated, and he languished about a year 
and then died ; such a hurt could not heal 
on him, though he came of an originally 
strong race. So he died at thirty — five 
years younger than I am now ! ” 

“Yes, but look at the better side. I 


26 Circled by Fire, 

know he sorrowed over his sins. Perhaps 
he had prayed as you have — ‘ Let any- 
thing come but a renewal of my crime ; ’ 
and this was God’s way of putting him 
out of temptation and giving him space 
for repentance. I never saw a man who 
seemed more humble and contrite ; and 
his prayers for you echo in my ears to 
this day. He brought down judgment 
on you, it is true, but he may also have 
procured for you by his pleadings a store 
of mercy.” 

“ And there was my grandmother,” con- 
tinued Miss Harlowe, moved to-day to 
an unwonted freedom of speech, “ she in- 
herited a love of liquor, and this love 
grew upon her as she was nursing a fam- 


27 


Circled by Fire. 

ily of young children. I suppose it had 
its share in destroying the children, for 
my father and uncle were the only ones 
who grew up. It would have been better 
for my grandmother if she had gone, as 
did her sister, to a mad-house. I have 
heard that when my grandfather died, his 
wife was too much under the influence of 
liquor to realize the solemn hour, and I 
know that often, when my poor father 
should have had his mother’s tenderest 
care, he was waited on by servants, and 
she was lying in her room drunk. When 
my father was dead, and I was growing 
up alone in my grandmother’s house, I 
remember that often she was carried to 
bed tipsy ; in her mad moods our two old 


28 Circled by Fire. 

serv^ants had to tie her hands and feet, or 
lock her in her room, to prevent her in- 
juring herself, or getting into the street 
in her disgraceful condition. She did 
escape once in her bed-gown, and was ar- 
rested on the streets as ‘ drunk and dis- 
orderly,’ and you. Doctor, and some of 
our family friends, got her home on the 
plea that she was ‘ subject to fits of aber- 
ration of mind.’ I think we were all glad 
when she was partially paralyzed, and 
could not get out of doors, but even then 
she was ungovernable, and her nurse used 
to give her liquor as the only means of 
keeping her quiet. I doubt if she was in 
her right mind when she died ! And I — I 
have had this warning before me all the 


Circled by Fire. 


29 


days of my life, and for ten years the 
memory of her wretched death, and to 
think of my following in her steps ! ” 

“ But why need you follow in these 
steps ? You tell me that when you strongly 
crave liquor, you restrain prayer lest you 
may lose the gratification of this appetite. 
Now, if in such a crisis you recall this 
story, which is so sharply impressed on 
your mind, I should think it would 
teach you to fear yourself and your 
besetting sin, and to cry mightily to 
the Lord to keep you from so direful 
a bondage.” 

Miss Harlowe shook her head. “ Green 
withes on Samson,” she said ; “ you know 
nothing of the strength of the monster 


30 


Circled by Fire. 


when it is aroused ; you live under the 
control of reason ; I live outside of it.” 

“ Partly,” said the Doctor, gravely, “ b)'’ 
your misfortune, and partly by your fault, 
your most grievous fault. Why not, since 
at times you can not control yourself, and 
will not seek in your worst danger the 
Divine control, why not place yourself, in 
such an interval of sanity as this, in the 
keeping of some one who will have power 
to withhold liquor from you ? Why not 
go to some Inebriate Asylum, where you 
shall be helped to live down your enemy ? 
Anything is better than what you now 
endure.” 

“ I suppose it is because of pride,” said 
Miss Harlowe. “ I keep thinking that I 


31 


Circled by Fire. 

shall not fall any more, and that I shall 
have reformed without such a public ex- 
posure of my infirmity. Just now I feel 
hopeless, and if any one were to put me in 
one of the carriages below there on the 
drive, and carry me off to an institution 
for reforming such miserables as myself, I 

should not remonstrate. By to-morrow 

% 

or next day, I shall be hoping for better 
things, and in three months I shall be — 
just as I am now. Sometimes I have 
thought of going to America, to the 
United States or to Canada, where all 
my associations shall be new ; where, as f 
have heard, there is less temptation than 
here, less of social drinking, and where 
with fresh interests and new friends I 


32 Circled by Fire. 

may be stronger to conquer my great 
temptation.” 

There was a long silence. It was now 
six o’clock, and while many who had been 
out all the afternoon for pleasure were 
going home to tea, a fresh installment of 
citizens was pouring out of street and 
close, for the fresh air of the daisied parks. 
In that far northern city, evening falls 
but slowly, and ten o’clock would bring 
the twilight. “The laddies will have 
wearied of their boats,” said the doctor, 
rising. “ Come, Miss Harlowe, will you 
go home by way of Saint Margaret’s 
Loch ? ” 

Miss Harlowe rose also, and going leis- 
urely down the Craig path, turned the 


33 


Circled by Fire. 

conversation upon other subjects than 
herself and her sorrows. 

As Miss Harlovve had said, with her to 
live was to be tempted, to struggle, to 
yield slowly, to fall, to repent, to suffer, 
to long to die, and to repeat times with- 
out number this dismal round. This 
bondage to strong drink is the most ter- 
rible of all slavery, because it saps the 
will power ; it takes vital force from the 
victim, and also brain force. The ancient 
poet tells us that what day a man be- 
comes a slave, observant fate takes half 
the man away ; this is emphatically true 
of one who comes under the power of 
strong drink. - 


3 


34 


Circled by Fire. 


As the short afternoon of late Septem- 
ber was closing, Miss Harlowe lay on a 
lounge of her sitting-room, her pale face 
and wandering eye betokening to those 
who knew her, that she had again fallen 
a victim to her disastrous craving, and 
was but recently recovered from a period 
of intoxication. The hour of realization 
and of remorse had come. She could not 
read, nor could she bear the presence of a 
friend ; she lay a prey to her mental an- 
guish. A ray of the sunset fell between 
the damask curtains, and rested on an 
empty decanter standing upon the side- 
board; the vessel looked as if fashioned 
of lambent flame. Gazing at it flashing 
in the dying day, Miss Harlowe apostro- 


Circled by Fire. 35 

phized this evil genius of her life : “ What 
a curse have you been to me ! At every 
turn of my life you have met and defeated 
me ; as a babe I had you in my food and 
for my medicine, under pretense of ward- 
ing off disorders which flesh is not heir 
to, and which generally only come by 
your interposition ; as a child I had you 
offered to me as an ingredient in my 
food ; pies, puddings, sauces, all bore your 
flavor. When I have been sick you were 
brought me as medicine ; whether I suf- 
fered from cold or fever it was all the 
same, you were supposed to be equally 
beneficial. Friends have offered you to 
me as token of their friendship, and have 
pledged my well-being in my min ! Ac- 


36 


Circled by Fire. 


quaintances proffered you as a mark of 
hospitality and good breeding; where 
have you not been present in books 
and in food, in confectionery and in per- 
fumes ? Even in church you have met me, 
not only in the communion cup, but I 
have seen you begirt with glasses and up- 
held by plates of biscuits, carried into the 
vestry-room to sustain between services 
the fainting strength of our elders.* You 
load the air which I breathe and you are 
ubiquitous as air. By you my childhood 
was orphaned ; by you my kindred have 
been swept from the earth, until none of 
them remain to me. By you I have been 
deprived of a woman’s natural home and 


* This is the custom now in some Scotch churches. 


Circled by Fire. 


37 


home ties; I am robbed of my dignity 
and honor ; I am useless in the world ; I 
live hourly on the verge of the pit of per- 
dition.” 

This was Miss Harlowe’s arraignment 
of strong drink. Her enemy was the 
grand enemy of the world ; in covenant 
with death, pain and poverty were his 
henchmen, the grave was his treasure- 
chest ; he counted not only kings and 
common men as his victims, but whole 
nations and races. And to meet such a 
foe, how was she counseled. 

Some said to her, “If you were but 
moderater “ I can not be moderate,” 
retorted honest conscience. “ Fly from 
your enemy,” said Doctor Calderwood, 


38 Circled by Fire. 

but she had yielded her will-power to the 
foe, and had not energy enough left to fly. 

“ Yield,” hissed the tempter, “ drink, and 
drink, and die,” and then a horrible spectre 
seemed to stalk to her out of her grand- 
mother’s grave, and pictured to her all 
that debased, shameful life and hopeless 
death, and she would not wlaolly yield ; 
she must continue her struggle. 

Her pastor pleaded, argued, threatened ; 
but tears and acknowledgments and reso- 
lutions were his only answer — not the de- 
sired reform. Already her failing had 
been hidden from public cognizance far 
longer than might have been deemed pos- 
sible ; but this woman was not to be al- 
lowed to go on screening her sin ; the 


Circled by Fire. 


39 


refuge of her pride was to be torn away 
from her. From September until Christ- 
mas she had stood firmly ; she had had a 
few battles with appetite and had routed 
her antagonist. The Saturday before 
Christmas her craving was very strong. 
Now was the time when she should have 
summoned external aid ; when she should 
have called for Doctor Calderwood and 
asked for some antidote to her thirst, and 
for his advice and the sustaining power of 
his knowledge in her hour of temptation. 
But between pride and ignorance she 
struggled on alone. She should have 
eaten plentifully, but no food tempted 
her, and she went supperless to bed. She 
spent a sleepless night, and rose in the 


40 


Circled by Fire. 


morning haggard and forlorn. After a 
light breakfast she thought over her mis- 
erable estate, and concluded to go to 
church ; possibly the cold air and the 
change of scene, the surrounding presence 
of her fellow-worshipers, the prayer 4nd 
psalm, some well-spoken word, might be 
her weapon of defense. She trembled 
with exhaustion and excitement as she 
finished dressing, and slowly descended 
the stairs. She pushed open the sitting- 
room door to tell her landlady where she 
was going ; the room was vacant, but on 
the sideboard stood a glass and a decanter 
of liquor, and the smell of brandy was 
in all the air. Without one instant to 
consider, she stepped to the fatal spot, 


Circled by Fire. 41 

poured out a glass of liquor and drank 
it off. 

At once her spirits rose, her strength 
returned, a flush dawned on her cheek, 
a light shone in her eye ; she stepped into 
the street and rejoiced in the sharp winter 
air, and as she went on to church, uncon- 
sciously to her, the poison was controlling 
all her powers. 

“ Give, give,” cry the leech’s daughters, 
and grudge if they are not satisfied ; thus 
is also the liquor mania. By the time she 
had walked a mile and a half to her 
church, her reason was partly clouded. 
Turning the last corner before reaching 
the house of God, she passed the open 
door of a liquor-store, and in her brain 


42 Circled by Fire. 

and veins rang the leech-daughter’s ciy, 
“ Give ! give ! ” She had never before en- 
tered such a place, or taken liquor so pub- 
licly, but not half knowing what she did, 
she entered and purchased a glass of 
strong whisky and water. Again, as she 
stepped upon the pavement, she felt 
strong and jubilant ; she was fast losing 
control of herself, but her mind retained 
the church-going bent which it had taken 
early in the day, and she moved on to her 
accustomed place of worship. She had 
been seen to leave the liquor-store by an 
elder and two members of the church ; 
but if nothing further had occurred, they 
would doubtless have concluded that she 
had gone to get relief from some sudden 


Circled by Fire. 43 

faintness or pain, and would have charita- 
bly passed it over. 

In her own place in church all things 
went by her as in a dream ; the clergy- 
man’s voice hummed monotonously far 
off ; during the prayer she seemed drifting 
dizzily in space ; echoes of her self-con- 
demnation sounded faintly in her brain, 
and her soul, arraigned before its own bar, 
was striving to understand and justify its 
ways. And then the clergyman rose up 
to preach, and her wandering eye sought 
to escape his, and she felt vaguely that 
'he looked at her, and that the solemnly- 
gesticulating hand was pointed at her, and 
his voice quoting prophetic denunciation 
was challenging her ways and dragging 


44 Circled by Fire. 

forth her sin from its covert, and her pride 
and anger took fire; and not knowing 
what she did, she staggered to her feet 
and screamed with inarticulate rage ! 

Forever too late now to hide her sin in 
her own remorseful bosom ! She had 
proven most bitterly that “He that con- 
cealeth his sin shall not prosper ; but 
whoso confesseth and forsaketh it shall 
find mercy/' 

She was taken home ; but here her piti- 
ful, evil story was in every mouth. “ Poor 
Miss Harlowe was going in her grand- 
mother’s ways, and what else could you 
expect ? She would soon be as bad as the 
old lady; it seemed a doomed family.” 
“ There had always been something queer 


Circled by Fire. 45 

about her, but this explains all. These 
illnesses, when she shut herself up, ah, it 
meant merely that she was intoxicated. 
A habitual drunkard ! seen coming out of 
a gin-house ! A disgrace to the church !” 
And so the miserable stream of talk flowed 
on and on. Church discipline could not 
now be withheld. Miss Harlowe came to 
herself, and more deeply horrified and 
penitent than ever before, was visited by 
her pastor and Dr. Calderwood, mercifully 
sent as representatives of the session, and 
was informed that she must be publicly 
suspended from church membership until 
such time as her reformation was evi- 
denced. 

And now that this great blow had fall- 


46 


Circled by Fire. 


en, now that she was openly exposed and 
disgraced, Miss Harlowe could not endure 
to meet any person’s eye ; she could not 
enter her church ; she loathed her native 
city ; and her purpose, heretofore vague 
and spasmodic, now became clear and 
fixed, that she would find a new home 
beyond the seas. She reasoned to herself 
that the excitement and interest of a sea 
voyage would begin her cure ; that once 
landed in the New World, in full posses- 
sion of her faculties, she would take ref- 
uge in some family where temptation 
could not possibly be in her way. That 
there, rested and consoled, she would still 
longer combat her appetite, and that as 
restiveness began to come upon her, she 


Circled by Fire. 


47 


would leave the United States and go to 
her cousin near Montreal; there she would 
have friendly aid in her efforts at reform, 
and she hoped by God’s grace finally to 
live down her besetting sin. 

Having come to this determination for 
her future, Miss Harlowe wrote two let- 
ters. The first was to a lady who had 
been a somewhat intimate acquaintance 
of her girlhood, older than herself, one 
whom she had always held in high respect, 
and with whom at long intervals she had 
corresponded. She told this friend that 
she intended hereafter to make her home 
in Canada, in the village where her only 
cousin lived ; but that on her way thither 
she desired to spend a few weeks with her 


48 Circled by Fire. 

in Baltimore, and that she trusted that a 
guest from the home-land would not be 
unwelcome. 

Her second letter was to her cousin, 
the Rev. Malcom Morton. While to her 
friend she had not breathed a word of her 
temptations, her failures, and the grievous 
battle which she was making with a de- 
praved appetite, to her cousin she gave a 
full statement of her wretched history, of 
her public disgrace, her suspension from 
church membership, and her assurance that 
in her own country there was no hope of 
her reform. She desired a new home, 
and to be near him, that he and his wife 
might help her in her efforts toward a no- 
bler life. She thought that he had better 


Circled by Fire. 


49 

buy her a pleasant house of moderate size 
with a garden. The cares of housekeep- 
ing and hospitality might be beneficial to 
her, and she would not dare intrude her 
dangerous example in his household and 
before his children. 

In due time she received answers to 
both letters. Mrs. Wortham expressed 
great pleasure in the thought of her visit, 
and hoped that her stay would be profit- 
able and prolonged. Her cousin met the 
sorrowful outpouring of her burdened soul 
in a spirit of Christian sympathy and wis- 
dom. He told her that he trusted she 
would find her new home and way of life 
the beginning of better things ; that the 
friendship and help of himself and his 


50 Cirded by Fire. 

family would always be hers. He hesi- 
tated to take the responsibility of pur- 
chasing a house for her ; therefore he beg- 
ged her to make his house her home while 
she examined the properties offered and 
chose for herself. 

These kindly letters shone like a light 
on Miss Harlowe’s future ; once more she 
began to hope. She looked forward with 
eagerness to being where the dark blots 
of her personal and family history were 
unknown, and she hastened her prepara- 
tions to set out for a land which to her 
imagination was an Arcadia free from 
temptation. To go to a strange country 
was to her no exile ; her own land, when 
she had asked food, had given her — a ser- 


Circled by Fire. 51 

pent. The biting poison which gnawed 
her heart and maddened her brain, was 
protected by law and surrounded her on 
every side ; to her the tender mercies of 
the Government had been most cruel ; 
her familiar friends had been her enemies, 
and she turned to the shores of the New 
World and saw them bright with a glory 
which, alas, was but the product of her 
own fond dream ! 

She sailed in a fine steamer from Glas- 
gow ; the beautiful shores of the Clyde, 
busy with ship-building, grand with castles 
and palaces, and brightened by white vil- 
lages, had no beauty to her; they were 
darkened by a curse ; she rejoiced when 
the fading spring daylight showed her the 


52 


Circled by Fire. 


river widening to the sea. The next day 
in the sterile shores of Truro, and the 
rocky Colonnades of the great Causeway, 
she looked her last on the Old World, and 
gladly set her face to the tumultuous 
North Atlantic. 

But alas for those whose strength is 
from without, not from within ; who rely 
for succor upon external things, and not 
upon the grace of God in the soul, often- 
times the very circumstances to which we 
look for. help betray us ; and our carefully 
chosen surroundings prove but an Egypt, 
a broken reed to pierce the leaning hand. 

In this flight from her ordinary sur- 
roundings, but toward new surroundings, 
and not toward God, Miss Harlowe’s ex- 


53 


Circled by Fire. 

perience was like that graphically de- 
scribed by the prophet Amos : “ As if a 
man did flee from a lion, and a bear met 
him ; or went into the house, and leaned 
his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit 
him.” 

Sometimes God permits those upon 
whom He designs to have mercy, to find 
by bitter experience the fallacy of trusting 
in anything human, that they may cease 
to stay their courage upon horses or 
chariots and may lean only on Him who 
speaks in righteousness. Mighty to save. 

Miss Harlowe had supposed that the 
novelty, excitement, and the sense of the 
precariousness of life at sea, would be a 
sure preventive of temptation during her 


54 


Circled by Fire. 


loumey to New York. However, she 
was hardly well out upon the sea, when 
the water roughened with a heavy wind, 
and she became violently ill. She had 
now no interests, no excitements, no fear 
of danger or dread of death, or looking 
to the future, nothing, in fact, but horrible 
physical distress, which she longed to be 
rid of on any terms. Distracted with 
headache and nausea, unable to leave her 
state-room, she thought nothing of past 
nor of future — she was absorbed in the 
present distress. Then came the usual 
ship-board remedies. 

“ Drink champagne, as much as you 
can swallow,” said one of her fellow-pas- 
sengers. 


Circled by Fire. 


55 


“ Brandy is your remedy,” said the ship’s 
doctor, and he sent by the stewardess stiff 
glasses of brandy. 

“ There’s nothing like good strong 
whisky toddy, with a lemon in it,” said 
the stewardess, in her zeal to comfort a 
passenger who looked well-to-do. 

“ Tell Miss Harlowe,” said the captain, 
“ that I say that nothing will suit her case 
so well as a good bottle of porter, the 
first thing in the morning,” and accord- 
ingly the steward sent in the porter by 
daylight. Who was to hinder? Some- 
body made their money out of the cham- 
pagne, brandy, whisky, and porter, and 
Miss Harlowe was fed on these, until ap- 
petite, ever yielding toward these entice- 


56 


Circled by Fire. 


merits, was rampant, and then she de- 
manded wine and whisky and porter and 
brandy on her own account, and the 
friendly passengers stared at the amount 
of liquors the lady could consume; the 
doctor shrugged his shoulders, and whis- 
pered to the stewardess, “ Here is no new 
taste.” The steward winked at his near- 
est assistant when a fresh bottle was de- 
manded for room No. 8; the stewardess 
wondered and was shocked, and had seen 
such things before, and was divided be- 
tween contempt for a woman who loved 
liquor and was undeniably drunk, and her 
regard for prospective fees, and her re- 
spect for “ good clothes,” and jewelry, and 
a handsome toilette apparatus. And so 


Circled by Fire. 57 

at last this most miserable journey came 
to an end. When the ship came in sight 
of land, Miss Harlowe, recovering sobri- 
ety, but shaken sorely by illness, remedies, 
and indulgence, was up and dressed, sit- 
ting upon the deck. 

She sat by herself, looking gloomily 
upon the new coast One part of her 
hope had sorely failed. She had expected 
to be sailing up this grand bay, strong 
and well, and fit to begin her journey 
through the United States; a journey 
which should be a sort of triumphal prog- 
ress, marked by conquests over self and 
temptation. Now, her face was haggard, 
and her hand trembled, and the ship peo- 
ple eyed her askance. Why did the ship 


58 


Circled by Fire. 


move so slowly ; would she never reach 
the land ? She longed to be out of sight 
of those to whom she had betrayed her- 
self ; she would hurry on, and in the safety 
of her good friend’s home she would be 
sure to be set apart from temptation, and 
once more she could “ begin again.” She 
concluded to go on at once to Baltimore, 
she dared not trust herself in a hotel ; she 
heard that the hotels in this innocent New 
World had bars, and abundant liquor in 
all forms, and she did not know what she 
might do if she went into one of them. 
She had had no liquor now for two days ; 
the morrow would be the third day of 
abstinence, and she would reach Mrs. 
Wortham, and in the care of a good, 


Circled by Fire. 59 

gracious woman she would be safe. Her 
thirst was great still, but conscience was 
awake, and she was fighting for her life ; 
once let her get where liquor was out of 
ready reach, and she could make a firm 
stand. 

The stewardess finding that Miss Har- 
lowe would leave the ship in the morning 
to take the train at once for Baltimore, 
felt that the poor lady was hardly fit to 
pilot herself in the strange place, and vol- 
unteered to go to the depot with her, and 
put her on the car. 

She did so, and at the depot told Miss 
Harlowe that she would telegraph to her 
friends to meet her at the station in Bal- 
timore, lest she -should lose her way. 


6o 


CU'cled by Fire. 


Mrs. Wortham accordingly received 
this telegram : “ Meet Miss Harlowe with 
a carriage at the five o’clock train, she is 
not well.” 

Mr. Wortham was absent from home 
with the two elder daughters. Mrs. Wor- 
tham was suffering from a severe cold, 
and had an elderly guest to entertain ; she 
therefore deputed her son to meet Miss 
Harlowe. 

“ I suppose,” she said to her old visitor, 
“ that Miss Harlowe has suffered terribly 
from sea-sickness.” 

When Miss Harlowe arrived, Mrs. 
Wortham was shocked to see her so trem- 
ulous, so wan and nervous. “ Y ou must 
have been suffering terribly ! ” she cried. 


Circled by Fire. 6i 

“Indeed I have,” said Miss Harlowe. 
“ I have not had a well day since we left 
the Irish coast, and our voyage was seven- 
teen days long.” 

“ I am so sorry, but rest and the set- 
tling of your stomach will do you good ; 
you had better go at once to bed; my 
chambermaid will help you, and unpack 
your portmanteau ; will you not have some 
supper first } ” 

Miss Harlowe declared that the idea 
of food was painful to her ; and this was 
true — she had not felt inclined to eat dur- 
ing the entire day, and now she was 
suffering from faintness, and instead of 
craving food, she longed frantically for 


62 


Circled by Fire. 

liquor, yet felt a certain comfort in think- 
ing that she could not get it. 

The maid having helped Miss Harlowe 
to bed, came and informed her mistress 
that the “poor lady was very sick and 
trembly ; she ought to have something to 
strengthen her up, or she would be very 
ill, sure.” If Mrs. Wortham had known 
the circumstances of the affair, she would 
have given her patient cream, and then 
strong beef-tea ; but the state of the case 
did not enter her mind ; this good lady 
had never seen a woman intoxicated, and 
did not know that it was within the range 
of possibilities that any friend of hers 
could have the awful craving for drink of 


Circled by Fire. 


63 


some miserable inebriate who gets sent to 
Randall’s Island for sixty days. She went 
up to Miss Harlowe’s room, inquired into 
her symptoms, expressed her sympathy, 
and said in conclusion : “ I have no doubt 
that a little whisky and water will tone up 
your stomach, strengthen you, and induce 
sleep. Will you have it hot or cold } ” 

Poor Miss Harlowe closed her eyes and 
made no answer. “ I will send Sara up 
with it,” said Mrs. Wortham, “ and pray 
do not rise to breakfast ; we must nurse 
you for a little. I will see you before I 
go to bed.” 

In a few minutes Sara arrived with a 
tray bearing a glass, a little bowl of sugar, 
a lemon, a cracker, two teaspoons, a pair 


64 


Circled by Fire. 

of small pitchers, one with hot and one 
with cold water, a spray of tea-roses, and 
— a pint bottle of whisky ! 

“Just carry up the bottle, Sara, and she 
can mix it for herself. I might get it too 
strong for her,” had said Mrs. Wortham. 
Sara set the tray on a stand by the bed, 
poured a little whisky into the glass, and 
left the room. 

Again a prey! The Fire Circle was 
unbroken still ! Here where she had been 
sure of safety, this kind and careful wom- 
an, in the abundant frankness of her heart, 
had shut her friend more closely in to 
that round of horrors. Miss Harlowe had 
fought hard, but with this craving, this 
opportunity, the fumes of this direful drink 


Circled by Fire, 65 

loading the air of her apartment, what 
could she do ? She yielded ! Raising 
herself on her elbow, she drank and drank 
again. 

At ten Mrs. Wortham came softly into 
the room ; her guest was soundly sleeping. 
In the morning she came again ; she slept 
still. The tray was near the bed and Mrs. 
Wortham took it up. She saw that the 
whisky bottle was about empty. 

“Poor Miss Harlowel” she said, “she 
is so weak that she has upset this bottle,” 
and thought no more of it. All that day, 
which was Thursday, Miss Harlowe was 
reported ill, sleepy, and able to take little 
food. The fact was, she had now lost con- 
trol of her appetite, but pride was striving 
5 


66 Circled by Fire, 

to conceal her shame. Would she have 
a doctor ? She almost resented the idea, 
she would be better next day. More 
liquor she must and would have, but was 
ashamed to send for it. Thursday even- 
ing she sent Sara to buy her a pint of co- 
logne. Friday she was still in bed, flushed, 
red-eyed, sometimes incoherent. 

Sara predicted brain fever, and Mrs. 
Wortham only hoped her friend had not 
contracted some dangerous disease on 
ship-board. She could not take the re- 
sponsibility of the case upon herself, and 
on Saturday morning she said, as she en- 
tered the room, “ My dear Miss Harlowe, 
you must see a physician ; I have sent for 
my own medical adviser, a skillful and a 


Circled by Fire, 


67 


most godly old man, friend and physician 
both. He is below stairs, and as soon as 
I have smoothed your bed and hair a little 
more, I will bring him up.” 

“ Then I must see him alone ! ” spoke 
up Miss Harlowe, sharply. 

“Certainly — as you like,” said Mrs. 
Wortham, surprised. 

“ Don’t open that blind, please ; let the 
room be rather dark ; light hurts my head.” 

Mrs. Wortham introduced the doctor 
and departed. The doctor asked a few 
questions, felt her pulse, let a little more 
light into the room, asked more questions, 
then suddenly throwing open the blind, 
he looked into his patient’s eyes. 

Miss Harlowe flung her arm over her 


68 


Circled by Fire. 


face. “ Oh, doctor ! you see it ; you know 
it. I am the most miserable of women — 
a vile inebriate ! ” 

“ How is this ?” said the doctor ; “ here 
is some mystery ; from all that Mrs. Wor- 
tham has told me of you, I should not 
have anticipated this trouble. Had you 
not better look upon me as a friend, and 
tell me your whole story ? ” 

The gentle tone, and the feeling that 
the worst was now discovered, induced 
Miss Harlowe to be frank; she detailed 
her family history, her own miseries and 
temptations, the flight from her besetting 
sin, and that sin pursuing or accompany- 
ing her, like the brownie in the fairy tale, 
who from the baggage of the household 


Circled by Fire. 69 

who are flying from him, cries “ We’re a’ 
flittin’.” 

“ Here at least I was sure of being safe,” 
she said, “ and here Mrs. Wortham herself 
brought me my destruction ! Good kind 
lady as she is, such troubles as mine have 
never come under her observation ; she did 
it in the innocence of her heart. And 
what shall I do now ? Again I must fly. 
I can not stay here and have my besetting 
sin known; I can not stand as a moral 
pariah in this safe and godly family.” 

“ So they will not consider you,” said 
the doctor. “Not one of them suspects 
the true state of the case, and not one of 
them will know of it but Mrs. Wortham. 
At once her best efforts will be enlisted 


70 


Circled by Fire. 


in your behalf; stay here and she will help 
you. I shall send you a prescription or 
two; keep your room until Tuesday 
morning; by that time your system will 
have returned to a quiet state, then come 
out to do something better. You must 
conquer or die.” 

“ Or conquer and die,” said Miss Har- 
lowe, “ perhaps I can do that.” 

When the doctor had explained to Mrs. 
Wortham the real nature of her friend’s 
disorder, that good lady was deeply 
troubled. 

“ What have I done ? ” she cried ; “ this 
unfortunate creature trusted to me for 
help, and what has been my part?” 

“ Let this teach you,” said the doctor, 


71 


Circled by Fire. 

“ that if it is dangerous to play with edge 
tools, it is doubly dangerous to play with 
poisons. He who is cut with a tool, there- 
after is generally careful in handling it ; 
but he who is poisoned with liquor loves 
his poison. Mrs. Wortham, it is never 
safe to give alcoholic drink to any per- 
son whatever. I would not prescribe it to 
my own mother, nor allow it to be pre- 
scribed for me. There is always some- 
thing better to be used, and there is al- 
ways danger in that cup.” 

For two months after this Miss Har- 
lowe remained with Mrs. Wortham ; the 
cares of her friend for her were diligent ; 
she watched over her, counseled and en- 
couraged her. Miss Harlowe’s naturally 


72 Circled by Fire. 

good mind, and her wide reading and 
graceful manners, rendered her a universal 
favorite ; wherever she went she pleased. 
In the family of Mrs. Wortham’s brother 
she was especially esteemed, and they 
urged her to return to the city during the 
ensuing winter and make them a visit. 

At midsummer she went to Montreal, 
and there meeting her cousin Morton, 
proceeded to his home. As no property 
suitable for her purchase was at that time 
offered for sale, she remained a welcome 
guest in his family. This new home was 
especially helpful and attractive to her, 
and as a barrier between herself and her 
dangerous propensity, she took a most 
solemn vow that if she there indulged in 


Circled by Fire. 73 

liquor, she would remain no longer under 
that roof. 

Mr. Morton had high hopes of her en- 
tire reform, and all went well until Febru- 
ary, when she purchased a pleasant cot- 
tage not far from her cousin’s parsonage, 
and ordered made the necessary repairs. 
While these were going on, and Miss 
Harlowe was undergoing a good deal of 
fatigue in overseeing the work in prog- 
ress, in ordering the making up of her 
household linen, and in going to Mon- 
treal to buy furniture, her deadly passion 
assailed her with unwonted power. She 
had by long, abstinence become stronger 
to struggle with appetite, and she did so 
in silence ; her natural reticence, mingled 


74 


Circled by Fire. 


with pride and shame, preventing her 
making a confidant of her cousin. 

Mr Morton, lulled to security by her 
long self-denial, had forgotten danger, and 
at this time set off with his wife for Que- 
bec to attend the marriage of his sister-in- 
law. During his absence Miss Harlowe 
went to Montreal and returned feverish 
and exhausted ; getting out of the car she 
twisted her ankle, and on arriving at her 
home the servant sent for the physician. 
The doctor found his patient semi-con- 
scious, feeble, in apparently a very low 
physical condition, and proceeded to feed 
her on milk and brandy, and brandy and 
raw egg. This treatment opened for her 
once more the flood-gates of destruction ; 


i' 


Circled by Fire. 75 

she was carried away by her craving for 
drink ; and when Mr. Morton returned 
home he found her recovering from sev- 
eral days of intoxication. The very next 
morning she received a letter from Mrs. 
Wortham’s brother, Mr. Leslie, entreating 
her to pay his wife a long visit. She said 
to her cousin : 

“ I shall go to Baltimore for a length- 
ened stay ; indeed until my house is fin- 
ished. I can not stay here and render 
your family the subject of invidious re- 
marks and surmises. I can not look your 
children in the face. I vowed I would 
not intrude upon you if I erred in this 
way, while sharing your hospitality.” 

“ It is no intrusion ; this catastrophe is 


76 Circled by Fire. 

the result of the doctor’s ignorance of 
your case, and is the outcome of a false 
idea of alcohol as a medicine. Do not 
leave us. Think how long you have stood 
firmly. We will not allow another occa- 
sion of falling to be presented to you.” 

“ Such occasions are bound to present 
themselves to those who are ready to fall,” 
replied Miss Harlowe. “ Do not hinder 
me. My fault makes me restless. I shall 
go to Baltimore. My house will be ready 
for me in May, and then I will return ; I 
will leave my final arrangements of the 
place to you and to your wife.” 

Seeing that she was persistent, Mr. 
Morton sought traveling company for 
her, and found a gentleman and lady 


Circled by Fire. 


77 


going from Montreal to Philadelphia. 
Miss Harlowe wrote to Mrs. Leslie, tell- 
ing when she might expect her. The 
journey was safe until she left Philadel- 
phia ; at this time she was suffering from 
a violent headache, having slept very little 
the * previous night, being unable to take 
her usual food, and also tried by the very 
great cold. In the car between Philadel- 
phia and Baltimore, Miss Harlowe grew 
worse ; she shared the seat of a very agree- 
able lady who expressed much sympathy 
for her. Miss Harlowe mentioned the 
length of her journey and the various 
causes of her present suffering. “ Y ou 
look nearly distracted,” said the lady. 

“ I feel so,” said Miss Harlowe ; “ I wish 


78 


Circled by Fire. 


I were in Baltimore. I hardly know what 
I am doing, I am so faint, and my head 
is so giddy and painful.” 

“ Y es, yes ; well, you must take some- 
thing, a half a glass of good whisky will 
set you all right. I always use it when I 
am traveling; it conquers nausea and 
headache.” And suiting act to word, she 
took from her satchel a flask of strong 
liquor, and in her own silver mug, made 
Miss Harlowe a potion and pressed it to 
her half-resisting lips. “ There ! you look 
better already! Now, in half an hour I 
will give you another dose, and you will 
be feeling first rate when you get to Bal- 
timore.” 

“ Perhaps the lady is not used to it, and 


Circled by Fire. 79 

it may injure her,” said a remonstrating 
voice from the next seat. 

“ Oh, it can not hurt her. It might be 
too much for her if she were at home and 
quite well, but feeling as she does, it 
merely restores the lost tone of the sys- 
tem, preserves the balance, as you may 
say ; see how much better she is ! ” 

In fact, the wonted stimulant was 
having its effect. Miss Harlowe’s hand 
ceased to shake, her pallid cheek and lips 
took a better hue, the look of pain and 
exhaustion passed out of her face, and her 
whole being shared the familiar excitation. 

“ See there, now ! ” said her new medi- 
cal adviser, proud of the improvement in 
her patient. “ Such another dose pretty 


8o Circled by Fire. 

soon will make a new woman of you. 
I’m a temperance woman, of course, but 
I’m not a fanatic. I believe every creat- 
ure of God is good and to be used with 
thankfulness and discretion. Whisky is 
a powerful agent for good if it is properly 
used, but it ought to stay in the hands of 
sober people, not of drinking people.” 

“ And how long would they be sure to 
be sober people with that in their hands ? 
Most drunkards were sober people once,” 
said the voice from the next seat, and 
then the car stopped and the speaker got 
out. 

Said Miss Harlowe’s seat mate: “A 
very pretty lady, but evidently a foolish 
fanatic. We are above such things ; now 


Circled by Fire. 


8i 


you must have another cup of whisky and 
water. Was that last sweet enough ? We 
shall be in Baltimore in half an hour, and 
you will be able to get comfortably to 
your friends.” 

“ I hope so,” said Miss Harlowe, “for I 
find I told them to meet me at the train 
next later than this, so no one will be 
looking for me. I must go to them alone, 
but they are near the depot.” 

“ I am so sorry I am going right on ! 
If I stopped here I would see you to your 
place. But you will be all right. I have 
put an extra tablespoonful in here, and 
that will keep your heart up ! ” 

When Miss Harlowe left the car the 

liquor taken had so seized on her ex- 
6 


82 Circled by Fire. 

hausted system and empty stomach, that 
she scarcely knew what she did. She 
vaguely determined to walk to Mr. Les- 
lie’s, that the cold air and the exercise 
might quiet her. But as had happened 
in Edinburgh, her brain was turned ; she 
saw an open door of a liquor-shop, went 
in and took a strong glassful. She was 
no longer master of herself. Bewildered 
she mistook the house, and instead of going 
to Mr. Leslie’s, went next door, stalked 
past the servant, entered the parlor, and 
by her wild demeanor almost threw the 
lady of the house into a fit. This terri- 
fied person sent to call Mr. Leslie to her 
aid, and he, dismayed, discovered in the 
intruder,, his own expected guest. 


Circled by Fire. 


83 


He sent for Mrs. Wortham. That good 
woman explained the case to him, and to 
her husband, who accompanied her to his 
house. 

“ What shall we do ?” queried Mr. Les- 
lie. 

“ Clara,” said Mr. Wortham to his wife, 
“ this poor woman is a stranger in a 
strange land, sorely tempted, and greatly 
falling. We must not be as priests and 
Levites who passed the sufferer by on the 

other side, but as the Good -Samaritan. 

« 

Let us take this sister home ; she may yet 
be more than conqueror through the grace 
of our God.” 

The burden assumed by these Christian 
people proved greater than they had ex- 


84 


Circled by Fire. 


pected, yet they carried it cheerfully as 
unto the Lord. Miss Harlowe fell very 
ill with gastric fever, and then with in- 
flammatory rheumatism, and until June 
was an invalid — part of the time in immi- 
nent danger of death — in their house. 
Their cares for her were unbounded, arid 
rendered, as bids the apostle, without 
grudging. During this long sickness 
Miss Harlowe seemed to enter on a great 
mental and spiritual change ; her physical 
strength w^s much broken, and her bodily 
feeling seemed more controllable than 
before. Mrs. Wortham noticed this to 
their physician. 

“ I hope so,” said the good man. “ I 
hope that she will be enabled to conquer 


85 


Circled by Fire. 

her appetite, and spend the rest of her 
days in peace. She has a fatal disease of 
the heart She may live for years, and 
she may drop off at any moment I have 
not told her of this. I do not wish her 
to pass the rest of her sojourning here in 
fear of death, but in fear of sinning 
against God, and coming short of the 
heavenly inheritance.” 

“ In spite of all her failures,” said Mrs. 
Wortham, “I believe Miss Harlowe is, a 
Christian woman. She seems to deplore 
her sin with the bitterness and brokenness 
of spirit which David exhibited. She has 
a close acquaintance with the Scripture 
and seems to have a deep spiritual un- 
derstanding of Bible truths. She appears 


86 


Circled by Fire. 


to me more sinned against than sinning. 
What a fate has pursued her ! She was 
born with this deadly appetite for alco- 
holic stimulants ; she has bsen surround- 
ed all her life with strong temptations; 
wherever she has tried to fly, she has met 
her foe ; she has been Circled by Fire ; 
but I trust that Heavenly Love will 
look on her compassionately at last say- 
ing, ‘ Is not this a brand snatched from 
the burning ? ’ ” 

Early in July Miss Harlowe took a 
grateful leave of this friend — ^who, if she 
had unwittingly Sinned against her, had 
made a noble atonement for the error — 
and returned to her cousin’s home. Her 
own home was in readiness for her and 


Circled by Fire. 87 

she began housekeeping for herself. She 
took an elderly Christian woman for a 
servant ; a young girl, an orphan whose 
health had broken down in school-teach- 
ing, for a companion ; and adopted a little 
girl left destitute, thus forming for herself 
home ties, and seeking to make her means 
go as far as possible in providing for oth- 
ers. After two months of this family life, 
suspecting possibly that her own health 
was precarious, she made her will, leaving 
half of her property to her cousin, her 
jewelry and richer articles of dress to Mrs. 
Wortham, and her house and the remain- 
ing half of her funded property to be used 
as, and to support, an orphanage for six 
girls, who were to be under the general 


88 


Circled by Fire, 


supervision of Mr. Morton, at a proper 
age be taught some means of livelihood, 
and at seventeen make room for dtHer 
helpless ones to take their places. 

A year from the period of her will- 
making Miss Harlowe invited her cousin 
and his wife to tea with her. They no- 
ticed that she looked very worn and pale. 
As they were sitting alone at the tea-table, 
after the meal was finished, Miss HarloWe 
said : “ I have now passed eighteen months 
without tasting liquor. Since I was six- 
teen such a period of release has never 
been mine. I want you to thank God 
for me. I do not find my appetite dead ;• 
the longing comes upon me fiercely at 
times. I have just passed through a week of 


Circled hy Fire. 


89 


torment, of craving, of almost yielding, of 
feeling my feet standing on slippery places, 
of strong crying to God for aid. And He 
has helped ; He reached from above and 
took me, and drew me out of deep waters. 
I feel like the worn swimmer tossed half 
lifeless on the strand, hardly a breath left 
in him, and yet feeling in all his languor 
a realization of safety. I do not dare to 
think that this conflict will be the last. 
But I have hope, that having conquered 
once, I may conquer again. Sometimes 
I think that I shall die in such a battle 
with invisible foes, I have indeed said to 
God: ‘Let me die rather than offend;’ 
and if I do die, I pray that it may be on 
the field of victory, and not of defeat ; 


90 Circled by Fire. 

that like the Romans of old, even in death 
my face may be bravely to the enemy, and 
fixed in resolution not to yield.” 

She spoke with a low, yet clear and 
earnest voice ; her two cousins watched 
her with reverence and sympathy as she 
spoke. Even as the last word fell* from 
her lips a swift change swept over her 
face; she sank slowly back in her chair 
and — was dead. On that field of her vic- 
tory some flying Parthian had sent back 
an arrow in retreat, and a conqueror she 
died. 

Laid in that peaceful haven where the 
wicked cease from troubling and the weary 
are at rest, this our sore-tried sister has 
finished her warfare and has gone to join 


» Circled by Fire, 


91 


those blessed throngs who have come “ out 
of great tribulation, and have washed their 
robes and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb.” 


TilE END. 




/ 




For Sunday-School Libraries. 


The National Temperance Society and Publication 
House have published Eighty-seven Books specially 
adapted to Sunday-school Libraries, which have been 
carefully examined and approved by a Publication Com- 
mittee of Twelve, representing the various Religious 
denominations, and they have been highly recommended 
by numerous Ecclesiastical bodies and Temperance Or- 
ganizations all over the land. They should be in every 
Sunday-school Library. The following is the List, any 
of which can be ordered through any bookseller, or di- 
rect from the rooms of the Society, 58 Reade Street, 
New York. 


At Lion’s Mouth SI 25 

Adopted 60 

Andrew Doug'lass 75 

Aunt Dinah’s Fledg'e. . . 1 25 

Alice Grant 1 25 

All for Money 1 25 

Brewery at Taylorville, 

The 1 50 

Barford Mills 1 00 

Best Fellow in the 

World, The 1 25 

Broken Rook, The 50 

Brook, and the Tide 

Turning', The 1 00 

Brewer’s Fortxme, The.. 1 60 
Come Home, Mother — 60 

Coals of Fire 1 00 

Curse of Mill Valley, 

The 1 26 

Drinking Foimtain 

Stories 1 00 

Dximb Traitor, The 1 25 

Eva’s Engagement- 
Ring 90 


Echo Bank f 85 

Esther Max'well’s Mis- 
take 1 00 

Fanny Percy’s Knight 

Errant 1 09 

Fatal Dower, The 60 

Fire Fighters, The 1 25 

Fred’s Hard Kght 1 25 

Frank Spencer’s Rule 

of Life 60 

Frank Oldfield ; or. Lost 

and Found 1 60 

Gertie’s Sacrifice 50 

Glass Cable, The 1 26 

Harry the Prodigal 1 25 

History of a Three- 
penny Bit 75 

Hard Master, The 85 

Harker Family, The. ... 1 23 
History of Two Lives, 

The 50 

Hopedale Tavern, and 
What it Wrought. .. 1 00 
Hole in the Bag, The... 1 00 


FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 


How Could He Escape P $1 35 


Humpy Dumpy 1 36 

Image Unveiled, The... 1 00 
Jewelled SeiTJent, The. . 1 00 
John Bentley’s Mistake 50 

Job Tufton’s Best 1 35 

Joe’s Partner 60 

Jug-or-Not 1 35 

Little G-irl in Black 90 

Life Cruise of Captain 
Bess Adams, The. ... 1 50 

Me Allisters, The 6o 

Mill and the Tavern, 

The 1 25 

Model Landlord, The. . . 60 

More Excellent Way, A 1 00 
Mr, Mackenzie’s An- 
swer 1 36 

National Temperance 

Orator, The 1 00 

Nettie Loring 1 36 

Norman Brill’s Life- 

Work 1 00 

N othing to Drink 1 50 

Old Times 1 35 

Our Coffee-Room 1 00 

Old Brown Pitcher, The 1 00 

Out of the Eire 1 35 

Our Parish 75 

Packington Parish 1 35 

Paul Brewster and Son 1 00 
Philip Eckert’s Strug- 
gles and Triiimphs . . 60 


Piece of Silver, A $ 

Pitcher of Cool Water.. 
Qiueer Home in Rugby 

Court, The.... 1 

Rachel Noble’s Experi- 
ence 

Red Bridge The 

Rev. Dr, Willoughby 


and his Wine . 1 

Ripley Parsonage 1 

Roy’s Search; or. Lost 

in the Cars 1 

Saved 1 

Silver Castle 1 

Seymours, The 1 

Strange Sea Story, A... 1 
Temperance Doctor, 

The 1 

Temperance Speaker, 

The 

Temperance Anecdotes. 1 

TimeWiUTeU 1 

Tim’s Troubles 1 

Tom Blinn’s Temper- 
ance Society 1 

Ten Cents 1 

Vow at the Bars 

Wealth and Wine 1 

White Rose, The 1 

Wife’s Engagement- 

Ring 1 

Work and Reward 

Zoa Rodman 1 


Either of the above will be sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of 
mice. Address 


J, N. STEAENS, Publishing Agent, 

58 Keade Street, New York. 


^ 88 8 SS 








